Five iPad / iPhone Apps That I Can’t Live Without

I love technology. I also love how technology makes my life a lot easier. I mean seriously, how did we ever survive without it?

I use my iPhone and iPad on a daily basis having installed a variety of apps that help enhance my daily productivity, make my life easier, or are just enjoyable. And yes, I have installed a few games. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have jailbroken my iPhone which has helped remarkably at making me more productive. But for the sake of today's conversation, I'm going to focus on apps that are readily available in Apple's App Store.

Week Calendar

I have talked about Week Calendar before and it still remains one of the few apps I turn to on a daily basis on both my iPhone and iPad. Not only does it offer several different gorgeous calendar views, it also has robust repeat event settings. But the one thing that really separates it from other calendar apps is the ability to save and sync templates between devices. I use this feature all the time.

For example, I play in a variety of softball leagues throughout the week. I know that the games are going to last at most an hour and ten minutes so I am able to create a template that is set for this duration, assign it to my sports calendar, and also have advance reminders. Now whenever I need to add my softball games in, I create a new event at the given start time, navigate to templates, select softball, and BOOM, it automatically sets the end time one hour and ten minutes later.

For this feature alone, Week Calendar and Week Calendar HD are worth the price. More information on the Week Calendar website.

Evernote

You've probably heard me mention Evernote a time or two, or three on the site and with good reason. It's a fantastic app for capturing notes, ideas, and creating lists. I use it daily as a means of keeping myself organized. The fact that it has robust mobile applications for iPhone, iPad, and other devices helps me capture notes on the go from wherever I am. And with its ability to geotag notes, I can see a map of where I was when I created the note. The fact that I can create a variety of virtual notebooks and apply tags for filing and organizational purposes makes this app a must have. And, you can't really argue with the price: Free.

While Evernote does offer a free service, their premium service is where the rubber meets the road. Recently adding the ability to upload Office documents to Evernote for OCR scanning, its robust OCR technology can now scan those documents making them searchable from within Evernote. It used to be it could only scan PDFs and Images. Not any more. You also get more upload allowance for being a premium user.

I can't speak highly enough about Evernote. Try it out. If you like, buy the premium plan. You won't regret it. And if you really want to become an Evernote Ninja, Brett Kelly's Evernote Essentials will get you up to speed fast.

Mr. Reader

As I'm sure you're aware, Google announced that's it's shutting down Google Reader, one of the go to places for content curators who subscribe to a lot of blogs. Present company included. Mr. Reader is an amazing iPad app that imports your subscriptions from Google Reader and allows you to read them on the go. While it currently syncs with Google Reader, once Reader sunsets, Mr. Reader will still continue to function by importing the same feeds from the blogs via a different service or some other means. The program's author says to stay tuned.

I really like Mr. Reader and all of the great options it has for sharing and saving content. For instance, I can save a post to my Buffer feed from within the app, adding commentary and editing the link to fit within a particular social site's guidelines. I can also save articles for reading later to Instapaper, or my personal favorite, Pocket (more on Pocket in a moment). I can view feeds according to how I have them categorized, or individually which really helps me save time. Mr. Reader also updates what I've read and what I haven't.

Tweetbot

There are tons of Twitter clients available for managing your Tweet Stream, but none of them come close to comparing to the very dynamic and beautiful Tweetbot app by TapBots. I have tried a lot of Twitter clients over the years, but Tweetbot is my go to client because of its beauty and its functionality.

I like being able to manage multiple Twitter accounts with the touch of a button. I can also quickly add hashtags and mention users in my tweets with just a few quick taps. Tweetbot also offers a variety of features including the ability to save tweeted links to Pocket; emailing tweets; adding to favorites; and lots of configurability options. One new feature they recently rolled out was the ability to view your Twitter stream by images. In other words, only tweets with images would be shown.

Two features that I think Tweetbot needs is the ability to save tweets to Evernote directly (without having to email them) and a way to Buffer tweets or retweets.

Those minor inconveniences aside, Tweetbot is an extremely powerful and function-rich Twitter client that's available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. One word of warning: Since Twitter is limiting the number of clients available for its service, Tweetbot is offered at a premium price so that they don't exceed their allotment of tokens. To learn more, click on over to the TapBots site.

Pocket

Last but certainly not least in my list of Five iPad / iPhone apps I can't live without is Pocket. Formerly the Read it Later app, Pocket is an awesome app for saving a variety of content for consumption later. I can save articles, images, and videos to Pocket from a wide variety of apps including Tweetbot, Mr. Reader, Feedly, and more. Pocket also allows you to save content directly to it from web browsers using a special browser extension or bookmarklet. Pocket also offers a variety of views for the curated content including viewing by image, video, or as a list. For instance, only posts with videos will appear in that particular viewing option. You can also view posts via thumbnail list, which is really handy for those of us who are very visual with our memories.

I love Pocket because I can download articles on my iPhone or iPad and read them offline. Any edits (deletions, tags, etc.) I make will sync across devices when I go online. I can also save favorites for reference later and any “read” items are archived, available via a simple search.

If you're on the go, or need a way to save items for later consumption, Pocket is a fantastic FREE app for just such a purpose. You can learn more about Pocket on their website.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of thousands of apps available in the Apple App Store for your downloading pleasure. I've downloaded my fair share of apps and I can say that the five I have discussed today are worthy of inclusion in your app arsenal.

Disclosure of Material Connection

Some of the links in the post above may be affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I will receive a modest commission from the sale. These links help support the maintenance of this website.

Please be advised that I only recommend products or services that I have used or tried personally and believe will add value to my readers' lives. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”